Jason eBook

“No, no!” he cried. “I didn’t
mean that. You know I didn’t mean that.
You’re worth nine years’ waiting.
You’re the best—­d’you hear?—­the
best there is. There’s nobody anywhere
that can touch you. Only—­well, this
place is getting on my nerves. It’s got
me worn to a frazzle. I feel like a criminal
doing time.”

“You came very near having to do time somewhere
else,” said the girl. “If this M.
Ste. Marie hadn’t blundered we should have
had them all round our ears, and you’d have
had to run for it.”

“Yes,” the boy said, nodding gravely.
“Yes, that was great luck.”

He raised his head and looked up along the windows
above him.

“Which is his room?” he asked, and Mlle.
O’Hara said:

“The one just overhead, but he’s in bed
far back from the window. He couldn’t possibly
hear us talking.”

She paused for a moment in frowning hesitation, and
in the end said:

“Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie!
Do you know anything about him?”

“No,” said Arthur Benham, “I don’t—­not
personally, that is. Of course I’ve heard
of him. Lots of people have spoken of him to me.
And the odd part of it is that they all had a good
word to say. Everybody seemed to like him.
I got the idea that he was the best ever. I wanted
to know him. I never thought he’d take
on a piece of dirty work like this.”

“Nor I,” said the girl, in a low voice.
“Nor I.”

The boy looked up.

“Oh, you’ve heard of him, too, then?”
said he.

And she said, still in her low voice, “I—­saw
him once.”

“Well,” declared young Benham, “it’s
beyond me. I give it up. You never can tell
about people, can you? I guess they’ll all
go wrong when there’s enough in it to make it
worth while. That’s what old Charlie always
says. He says most people are straight enough
when there’s nothing in it, but make the pot
big enough and they’ll all go crooked.”

The young man’s face turned suddenly hard and
old and bitter.

“Gee! I ought to know that well enough,
oughtn’t I?” he said. “I guess
nobody knows that better than I do after what happened
to me.... Come along and take a walk in the garden,
Maud! I’m sick of sitting still.”

Mlle. Coira O’Hara looked up with a start,
as if she had not been listening, but she rose when
the boy held out his hand to her, and the two went
down from the terrace and moved off toward the west.

Ste. Marie watched them until they had disappeared
among the trees, and then turned on his back, staring
up into the softly stirring canopy of green above
him and the little rifts of bright blue sky. He
did not understand at all. Something mysterious
had crept in where all had seemed so plain to the
eye. Certain words that young Arthur Benham had
spoken repeated themselves in his mind, and he could
not at once make them out. Assuredly there was
something mysterious here.